Primary Menu

Month July 2012

Double workouts today. Crossfit in the morning and Yoga in the evening. How do these workouts go together? It’s complicated. It’s like this, crossfit is helping me build strength and giving me cardio workouts in ways that I haven’t seen with Yoga. Last week, I got up from my desk, ran a mile and wasn’t winded at all. I don’t remember the last time I could do that (10-15 years ago?). Crossfit is tough, and it isn’t for everyone. You really have to be sure to give your self time off and take care of yourself. For me, that involves getting a massage every 2 to 3 weeks and acupuncture every 2 to 3 weeks. Yoga is healing for me. In a good yoga practice I am able to stretch, relax, and clear my mind. A normal week for me is 4 crossfit classes and one yoga class. I’ve arrived at this schedule because of my work and family schedule. That’s what I can get to, so that is where I go. From a physical standpoint, crossfit has changed my yoga practice, and my yoga practice informs my crossfit (body awareness and control).

Ok – on to the cleanse update. 9 days complete. Smoothie for breakfast, and soups for lunch and dinner. I have to say, I’m kind of looking forward to granola for breakfast tomorrow 🙂 That’s 9 days eating no meat, no wheat, and no dairy, and no caffeine (eek!). I find that I’m reducing my portion size more and more every day. I’m not exactly sure why I’m eating less, but I do have plenty of energy and I’m not going through the day hungry.

Let’s start with Sunday. I woke up feeling really good, had a smoothie for breakfast and made it to crossfit. When I got back, I saw something I hadn’t seen in about a year, a number less than 200 on the scale 🙂 That was a pretty good feeling. The lightest I’ve been in my adult life is 189, and I’d be happy to get back there again.

For lunch, we headed to Panera. I was scheduled to have a salad, so a simple salad I had, along with a fruit cup. Part of the reason that I went to Panera, was because I had to go to the mall… to buy running shoes. What? That’s right, running shoes. I got a pair of New Balance minimus. I wanted something that could be used for running, but also provided a flat platform for weightlifting. I wore them today, seemed pretty good.

I ended the day with a good dinner and lots of family time.

Monday! My morning routine is falling into place. Make smoothie, go to gym. That’s what I did today. Good test run on the new shoes. I made my lunch salad… a left it at home. Oh well. I was able to make a very similar salad at work.

For dinner, I did a menu swap. Sub out the veggie curry, sub a veggie stir fry.

Now, something that is amazing to me: I’m eating much smaller portions that I’m used to. I’ve got plenty of energy, sleeping well, but just eating less food overall. That’s good, because I used to eat too much before. That is something that I hope sticks with me.

And one last clarification. On day 6 I said I was planning on cutting this a little short, but I said the wrong number. I’m going to do 11 days, so 3 days to go.

6 days down. Started the day off with a yummy smoothie and a great yoga practice. I finally got my quads stretched out, so I think I’ll be ready to hit the gym again soon, maybe tomorrow. Soup for lunch and stir fry for dinner. I modified the lunch recipe by not sending the soup through the blender, I think it worked better for me. Dinner was a complicated recipe! But got it all cooked and served. I did wait too long to eat dinner, and feeling kind of meh until after eating. Snacks were a little more difficult today, since I couldn’t just walk down the hall and grab a piece of fruit.

Cleanse-wise, I’m thinking of knocking this back to 9 days from 14. While I’m doing well, I think that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew (sometimes literally).

With 5 days complete, it feels like one week down, but I’ve still got two days to go. From an exercise standpoint, today needed to be a day of rest. That worked out pretty well for me, I got some stuff done at work.

Menu today, smoothies for breakfast and lunch and a yummy vegetable stir fry for dinner.

On the lunch smoothie. I still haven’t figured out the optimal thaw time. I had to drink it in stages and it took me 90 minutes to finish it. On the positive side, eating slow is good for you.

I feel pretty good, but I’m still in a stretch of days where giving up sounds like a good idea. Onward, almost to half way.

Stats

Weight: 203.6 (-3.4 overall, but up from yesterday)

exercise: rest!

steps taken: 5302, plus whatever I get in before bed. It’s a rest day.

4 days down, 10ish to go. I say 10 ish, because I see myself easing into a more normal diet (for me) on the last night. And I know that I have 1 dinner out with friends next Thursday. It’s a long standing plan, so I’ll be eating out. Looking at the menu ahead of time, I’ll probably have grilled halibut and asparagus. I know, a digression, but it’s on my mind.

I made today’s lunch the night before, so that made my morning a little more streamlined. Smoothie for breakfast, and out the door. Crossfit this morning. I was still sore from Tuesday (yes 2 days ago), but worked through it. Soup for lunch. I didn’t really like it that much, but it was ok. The recipe called for a puree, and it might have been better not. Same with dinner, it was a vegetable curry, and I just didn’t like it. Now, I’m OK with that. That’s the attitude I brought into this. I figured that I would be experiencing some new things, and some new flavors. Curry is just not a dish I like, but I tried it 🙂

Energy levels are good and I’ve been sleeping really well. Apparently Cortny was up with Elliott from 2am to 3am, and I didn’t even notice. Sleepy dad. Overall, I feel great.

Now the hard part. Today I found myself craving food that’s not on the menu. This is especially difficult in my workplace where there’s free food all around. I’m sticking to it. Good so far 🙂

Steps taken: 4719* (That’s the best number I have. I forgot my fitbit, and picked up a pedometer at work. I don’t trust the fre pedometer though, on my walk today, it says I took about 600 more steps on the way back. Anyway, I’m happy w/ what I did today.)

Note on weight loss: This isn’t a quick fix. Sure I’m dropping some pounds quickly, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stay off without additional hard work.

Day 3 of my cleansing diet is drawing to a close. After the first two days, I was starting to get a little scarred. I had pretty big caffeine headaches on Monday and Tuesday, today I was fine. I notices an increase in energy today, but that could also be attributed to the baby sleeping all night 🙂

Breakfast and lunch were both smoothie based. I made the lunch smoothie the night before and froze it, and then put it into the fridge at work. It turns out that is not enough defrost time, so I ended up eating lunch a little late, oh well.

Then, this afternoon, the weirdest thing happened. I went out to take a walk and decided to run. I ran about 1 1/4 miles. I went on a run… for fun. And kind of liked it. Weird.

Tomato soup for dinner, thanks to Cortny for making it for me.

And finished the day by walking to teach my 7:15pm yoga class, and walking home. I was worried that I wasn’t going to get enough exercise in today, but the run kind of just happened, and I was able to get my walk into yoga (about 2.5 miles round trip).

Then, 8am crossfit. Today’s workout was very intense. I came out of it feeling very hungry, but was able to get through to lunch time by just re-hydrating with some water, and enjoying a banana mid morning. Really, I was just drained. (See the workout in the image).

Good salad for lunch and then homemade soup for dinner. The knife skills class that I took is really paying off with all the veggie chopping that I’m doing.

In general, I feel tired today. Really tired. Going to bed an hour early tired. I’m blaming the 48 minute off the charts hard workout. Back at it tomorrow.

Today is day 1 of a 14 day cleanse that I’m doing. I’m following the cleanse from thephilosophie.com (I met Sophie at Yoga teacher training a few years ago). I thought it might be helpful to me to just journal how things go and to let everyone know the results.

Why I am doing this? Well, after an injury in 2010/2011 I’ve really struggled with keeping weight off. And, working at Google where there is an abundance of free food, has been an issue for me. I weighed about 190 pounds when I started working at Google (down from 212/215ish when I moved to Seattle in 2007). I was only up to 195 in May of last year. That didn’t last long, and by the end of 2011, I was back up to 205.

I need to do something to get weight under control. I still exercise a bunch. Yoga 1-2 days a week, and crossfit 3-4 days w week. What’s missing is a good diet. So, am I doing this cleanse as a weight loss means. Well, kind of. I expect to lose some weight through this process because I won’t be stuffing myself with calories. However, I’m realistic that this isn’t cure all solution. Two weeks is long enough to change some habits. Even if I come out of this with just the ability to snack better, it will be a long term win.

Let’s back up a day. Shopping. I decided to go to Whole Foods. This really just delayed the process. I should have gone to my local store, Ballard Market. I even had to stop at Ballard Market on the way home because Whole Foods didn’t have 2 of the things I needed. Now, I’m not knocking Whole Foods, it’s a great store, but not my normal shopping location, so that slowed me down.

Cooking this morning was an interesting. I had to make a smoother for breakfast and make a smoothie for lunch. I’m not sure if my blender will make it through the two weeks. (although this is not in any way a all smoothie diet, the blender gets 48 hours rest).